SCHNENECTADY— Police are investigating a grisly murder-suicide where a man fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend multiple times and cut her throat then hung himself with a rope in the closet of a second-floor apartment in the Vale neighborhood Thursday afternoon, according to authorities.

Police Lt. Mark McCracken said Thursday during a news conference at police headquarters that they were not releasing the names of the victims until relatives were notified.

He said that around 1:17 p.m., police received 911 calls from several neighbors about a man with a knife at 6 Mynderse St. near Mohawk Ambulance Service in the city's Vale neighborhood.

Once officers arrived and forced their way into the two-family dwelling they found a man and woman dead in what he described as a murder suicide.

Neighbors said the man and woman, whom they believed to be in either their late 30s or early 40s were Guyanese immigrants.

One of those neighbors, who declined to give his name, said he had let the woman use his cell phone around 1:25 p.m. Feb. 15 to make an emergency call after she dashed from her house in only her nightgown frantically screaming, "Somebody help me, he's going to kill me."

His wife, who also refused to give her name, said the woman always kept to herself.

"She was a very sweet person and didn't bother anybody," said the neighbor, who believed the woman worked at a supervisor at a hotel in the Albany area.

The couple recounted that the woman's former boyfriend had left by the time police responded but that they saw the man back at the home days later. The husband and wife said the woman told them that the man grew angry when she told him she planned to go downstate to visit her children.

As a result of that altercation, the man was charged with unlawful imprisonment and menacing but was released on bail by a City Court judge, said authorities.